


Of Wolf and Man

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-07-18
Updated: 2003-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-05 20:58:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm sure someone has done this before, but I just can't not do it. It's a songfic -- of course -- to Metallica's Of Wolf and Man. Remus/Sirius. OotP spoilers. Can you say OTP? I knew you could. Please note: this is my first shot at writing Remusfic, so if it's rough or utterly shithouse, blame me, not him.</p><p>Dedicated to Spam and Lizyrd.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Wolf and Man

**Author's Note:**

> Characters from the Harry Potter series belong to J.K. Rowling. Of Wolf and Man belongs to Metallica; lyrics reproduced here without permission.

_ **Off through the new day's mist I run  
Out from the new day's mist I have come  
I hunt  
Therefore I am  
Harvest the land  
Taking of the fallen lamb ** _

_ **   
** _

Remus waits long enough at Grimmauld Place to be certain that things are under control. It is the Order's place now; bright lights, bustling people, the Black essence all but gone, save for Mrs. Black's portrait on the wall. Perhaps, one day, it will be Harry's home, but for now it is a place of organisation and Remus can't stand it.

After a while, he senses that he has faded into the background of most people's perceptions, and when Tonks scoots in the front door, green hair flying, armful of papers slipping from her grasp, Remus ducks out of the door and closes it behind himself.

It is midnight. The moon drifts lazily in the sky, clouds occasionally passing in front of it, but Remus knows it is there nonetheless. The moon isn't full, but it doesn't need to be.

He changes, focusing on the wolf, bringing it up from the place below the surface of his mind where it is tenuously caged for most of the month. The streets are deserted; nobody sees him save for an orange tabby cat, which flees when it sees the wolf emerge from the man.

In the past, he thought of the wolf as a prison, until he met Sirius and James and Peter. Their eagerness to learn to change made him realise that the wolf could be freedom. While Sirius was in Azkaban, James dead, Peter believed dead, Remus saw his return to the wolf each month once again as a return to imprisonment. Now, with Sirius gone, the wolf is somehow freedom again.

Remus begins to trot purposefully towards fresh air and even more freedom, away from the silent, dark buildings. He passes a house with a single light on in the front room; with his keen hearing, he notes the sound of a woman crying. Whoever she is, she too is waiting for someone who will never come home.

__

_ **Off through the new day's mist I run  
Out from the new day's mist I have come  
We shift  
Pulsing with the earth  
Company we keep  
Roaming the land while you sleep ** _

__

Remus-the-wolf, stalking the halls of the Shrieking Shack. Sirius the dog, right there by his side. Once a month, at the peak of the moon's cycle. James and Peter become mere background objects, the stag with the rat perched on his head or back.

The two of them in class together. Remus sucking the end of his quill and trying to think what to write. Sirius looks across at him and tries not to let his mind think what it wants to so very badly.

They find each other in seventh year. James has Lily by then, and Peter has nobody, but seems to be happy enough anyway. At first, Remus and Sirius keep themselves a secret. But then one day James comes into the dormitory when they are kissing and that's the end of secrecy.

The first kiss. His little hands in Sirius's hair, fingers tangling, pulling him close. Sirius's mouth there, not surprised, not struggling, but pressing warmly against Remus's, lips parting, the sudden flick of his tongue a surprise to them both. The beginning. Not, by a long shot, the end. They have done far more than that since that day, far more that James has never caught them doing, bless fate and detention for that.

'You're the good boy,' Sirius says one day as they sit, hand in hand, and look at the lake. 'You were the prefect. Why are we together?'

Remus answers with a kiss. 'Because we are,' he says, pulling away. 'Because we are.'

_Because we are_: perfectly suited. Is it coincidence that Sirius's Animagus form is a canine? Surely not. _We are_: two of a kind, two brave Gryffindors not bowing before the wolf, but embracing it. _Are_: to be, to be together, always.

Their fingers lace together on the grass. Remus's hands are smaller than Sirius's, frequently stained with ink, occasionally stained with other things more Sirius-related. He likes the way that Sirius gasps at the moment of climax, and he likes the way that Sirius watches him lick his fingers clean, wide-eyed and awed.

__

_ **Shape shift       Nose to the wind  
Shape shift       Feeling I've been  
Move swift       All senses clean  
Earth's gift      Back to the meaning of life ** _

__

The grass brushes against Remus's belly as he slinks, low, stalking a rabbit. He doesn't want to eat the rabbit, or even kill it, but just to scare it. He wants to warn it, in a way, of what the big bad world can hold. It looks like a baby. It is a baby. It is too innocent to need to know this yet. But he intends to teach it anyway.

At Hogwarts, Remus knows, Harry is probably finding out about the prophecy. Remus doesn't know the whole prophecy, but he has thought about what little he knows enough times over the years to glean some kind of understanding from the pieces. Puzzles always fit together sooner or later.

It's foolish to say that Harry is as innocent as this baby rabbit, but Remus-the-wolf likes the idea anyway. The trouble is that Harry has already seen four years' worth of evil, and if this little rabbit has even lived that long Remus will just eat it instead of teasing it. He crawls closer. Harry isn't an innocent and, after everything that has happened, Remus isn't one any more either.

The gift of the wolf is that when the wolf's instincts take over, Remus doesn't have to think any more. He doesn't have to think about the veil and Sirius. He doesn't have to think about Sirius as someone gone; he can slip back into the past, when they were wolf and dog or sometimes wolf and boy, under the moonlight, under the stars, complete. He knows it's hopelessly trite to refer to someone as 'my other half', but the wolf doesn't, and Remus can think it without laughing at himself.

He thinks the rabbit can smell him, and hunkers even lower in the grass. He feels more like a cat than a wolf. He feels, truth be told, rather an idiot. He doesn't want to be here, toying with the wildlife; he doesn't want to be back at Grimmauld Place, watching from the outside; he doesn't even want to be at Hogwarts supporting Harry while Dumbledore shares the big revelation. He wants to be in the past, with Sirius.

__

_ **Bright is the moon high in starlight  
Chill in the air cold as steel tonight  
We shift  
Call of the wild  
Fear in your eyes  
It's later than you realised ** _

__

The Shrieking Shack isn't a place to be afraid of if you're inside it and you know the secrets behind it. Remus wakes up human in the mornings; it's only at night that there is anything to fear.

There's a bed for him to rest in if he needs to after a long night. The Hogwarts staff understand the needs of a werewolf.

Sirius is curled up asleep on the bed as the dog. Remus pats his head and then shakes him a little, and Sirius wakes, blinking sleepily. A little light comes through the boarded-up windows, enough for them to see each other. Sirius changes, staying curled up, as if to hide his body from Remus, who manages to look anyway.

'How are you?' Sirius asks.

For answer, Remus holds out one thin arm; it is scratched and covered in dried blood. 'It was better than most times,' he says as Sirius shakes his head.

They sit in silence for a moment, looking at each other. As far as the nakedness goes, they are fairly comfortable with each other, after all this happens every month and clothes don't change with the rest of them. Remus reaches out and rests his hand on Sirius's hip, then after a second begins tracing lines on his skin.

'Mmmm.'

Remus kisses him, like the first time in the Gryffindor dormitory, but his hand is wandering across Sirius's stomach and then down. He feels the soft curling hairs under his hand, then...

Remus is the good boy. He is the good boy because he was the prefect with the badge, and he is the good boy because of what he can do with his hands.

Sirius sounds a little shocked when he gasps Remus's name, and Remus stops, his eyes inquiring when they meet Sirius's.

'No -- don't stop.'

So he doesn't.

Remus wakes up with the coppery taste of blood in his mouth every morning after a change, but the taste of Sirius washes it all away.

__

_ **Shape shift       Nose to the wind  
Shape shift       Feeling I've been  
Move swift       All senses clean  
Earth's gift      Back to the meaning of life ** _

__

The rabbit has scented him and makes a run for its burrow. The wolf wants to chase it; Remus holds back and lets the little creature escape. He still doesn't feel better. He didn't really expect that changing would make him feel better. The fur and teeth of the wolf are beginning to feel like a prison again.

He remembers how he used to bite himself when there was nothing else to bite. The time that Sirius came too close -- in human form, too -- and the taste of his blood. Sirius had forgiven him, of course.

Remus wonders what exactly lies beyond that veil. Is Sirius still there somewhere? Are James and Lily just waiting for someone to each out and take their hands and bring them back into life? Is that veil the one between life and death or is it something else? And he thinks how stupid the way Sirius died was. The look of shock on Sirius's face... Remus had felt it on his own.

Bellatrix Lestrange. If Remus could, he would drag her out here and hunt her. He would chase her for miles until she dropped, and then he would tear out her throat with his teeth.

This thought makes him feel a little better.

He really should go back to Grimmauld Place -- they will be wondering where he has gone, and with good reason, since he himself isn't entirely sure where he has gone. He thinks Tonks realised he was leaving, but isn't entirely certain. Someone will have noticed by now, and he is the good boy, so he has to go back and be good and not let himself crumble from the inside, the way he wants to.

The wolf wants to do one more thing before they go back, though, and Remus lets it; pointing his nose at the moon, the moon which doesn't even have the decency to be full for him to mourn, he howls.

__

_ **I feel a change  
Back to a better day  
Hair stands on the back of my neck  
In wildness is the preservation of the world  
So seek the wolf in thyself ** _

__

The way they were. Remus doesn't really approve of the way Sirius teases Snape -- and, indeed, anyone he can think of to tease -- but he's a little afraid to tell Sirius so, afraid of losing him.

The way they were -- the two of a kind hand in the deck of cards that is the Hogwarts student body. James being the King; Wormtail the Joker; Snape the odd card out, perhaps, the card that explodes during the game of Snap. Remus likes Sirius when Sirius isn't teasing anyone and is with him. No -- he loves him.

One day, he manages to say the words. It's early morning again and they are lying on the bed in the Shrieking Shack, snug against each other, Sirius tucked up against Remus's back. Neither of them are moving for the moment, although they will; for the moment it's right to be still, Sirius locked inside Remus, together. This is relatively new to them, although they have progressed swiftly from those first tentative touches.

'Sirius?'

'Mmmm?'

'I love you.'

Sirius nips him on the shoulder. 'I love you too, you silly wolf.'

'Why didn't you ever say it?' Remus's voice is slow; he is drugged with Siriusness, with the soporific themness.

'Because I was afraid you wouldn't love me back,' Sirius says after a pause.

Remus almost rolls over to face him before he remembers that Sirius is inside him; he settles for twisting his neck around on an impossible angle. '_You_? _You_ were afraid?'

Sirius brushes the hair out of Remus's eyes; it is always unruly the morning after a change. 'Only of losing you,' he says. He manages to kiss Remus, despite their awkward position.

'Silly dog,' Remus says.

'Silly wolf,' Sirius retorts.

Then Sirius begins moving, and neither of them can talk any more, not with any coherence.

'Love you,' Remus says again, afterwards.

'Love you.' Sirius pauses. 'Always.'

'Always.'

__

_ **Shape shift       Nose to the wind  
Shape shift       Feeling I've been  
Move swift        All senses clean  
Earth's gift      Back to the meaning of life  
Back to the meaning of wolf and man ** _

__

Remus borrows a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt off someone's clothesline, feeling guilty, but wanting to be himself again.

'Always,' he says out loud to himself. 'Always.'

But always doesn't necessarily mean as long as it would seem to. They have had their always cut short by fate, by Bellatrix Lestrange and her blasted wand. Remus wants his always back, but it isn't going to happen. He wants to find Bellatrix and tell her: _you took away my always, you bitch_, before ripping her to shreds.

He remembers, now, staying with Sirius at Grimmauld Place. Making excuses after Order meetings turning into the two of them sharing the place, turning into the two of them sharing a room, a bed, each other. Sharing their always. Remus remains surprised that everything stood the test of time and Azkaban, but he hangs on to the first memory after Sirius came back: the way he'd woken at three in the morning to a banging on the front door and a Hippogriff in the garden, and Sirius, and Sirius's mouth, and though he'd been shocked at how dreadful Sirius looked, kissing him, kissing him, kissing him.

Remus walks barefoot through dewy grass and along concrete pavements; he comes to the right place and focuses his mind, and the house appears, sliding into reality between the bass-boomists and the house of the elderly couple with the cats on the other side. He doesn't feel better, but he does feel better, but he doesn't. On the other hand, soon it may not matter any more. Voldemort has vanished, Bellatrix with him, but Voldemort disappeared does not mean Voldemort dead.

Tonks is in the front hall, almost as if she stopped just where he left her. 'Hello!' she says, summoning up a little cheerfulness for his sake. 'I was expecting you back soon.' Remus pulls the door shut; behind him, the sun is rising.

'Well, I'm back,' he says. 'So where do we go from here?'


End file.
